The Out-of-Area Rides section of the site lands a new ride today. This one is a fairly long, singletrack-heavy loop meant for sampling the trail whose name is in the title. South Yuba Trail is a singletrack of pretty high difficulty that follows the narrow and beautiful canyon of its namesake river. As far as I know, the trail is well liked and highly respected by experienced mountain bikers. My experience of the portion of South Yuba Trail included on this loop was a bit of a mixed bag, though. One half of it was virtually pure joy while the other half brought me more suffering than enjoyment. My personal opinion of the disappointing portion of the trail is that it is an unfortunate missed opportunity. Still, I would have to agree that the trail, overall, should qualify as one of the mountain biking treasures of California.

There have been few pieces of feedback since I've launched this website that might qualify as "disagreement", and of the rare cases where I've received opinions that could remotely be considered an objection of one sort or another, the largest portion probably has been about the "aerobic difficulty" and "technical difficulty" rating scores I've assigned to the rides listed here. I've had both types of criticism on this front: inexperienced riders suggesting that I should have rated a ride with a higher difficulty than I have, as well as seasoned riders complaining that I'm overestimating the difficulty of technical rides. I have recently been convinced that some adjustments are actually called for and have now gotten around to making some changes.

I haven't touched the aerobic difficulty rating I've given to any ride, but I've made some changes to the technical difficulty rating of a number of rides. It's probably fair to say that the technical ratings have received more feedback than did the aerobic ratings. In fact, you can read part of the discussion that finally convinced me of the need for some change in the user comment section of the "Demo Forest (Sawpit Trail)" ride. As the roster of rides represented on the site grew to include every last technical (legal) ride in the Bay Area and especially once it also started expanding toward some gnarlier options in the Sierras with the introduction of the "Out-of-Area Rides" section, some of my assessments of the technical difficulty of the earliest rides on the site started looking incongruent. Actually, all the trail rides whose technical difficulty I've changed today have been "demoted". There hasn't been a single trail ride whose technical difficulty I've bumped up.

There have been a few rides who had their technical difficulty raised, but all of those are paved road rides. My technical difficulty rating for road rides is a somewhat problematic concept. I don't see road riders talking too much about how "technical" a road route is in the first place. I think the concept applies to road cycling much more weakly. My latest policy for picking this rating for road rides was based on the attempt to decide the difficulty of a given ride "as far as road rides go". In other words, a more "technical" road ride would be one where you might need to negotiate more tight curves at high speed, have more off-camber turns, do more riding on fine and slippery roadside sand or gravel, see more cases where you're squeezed into a narrow strip on the side of the road by passing traffic, etc. Even with that criteria in mind, though, I can't really see myself as rating a road ride with a technical difficulty of 8 or 10. So, technical ratings of the road rides on this site may have to remain a muddled affair until I can think of something more sensible. Meanwhile, what I originally used to do for road rides on the site even earlier was to rate almost all of them with a 1. So, I've now changed some of those as part of this revision in order to make them a bit closer to how much a road cyclist might consider them to be "technical" based on the criteria I've justed explained.

In case anyone is curious, the number of rides that have had their technical difficulty rating modified is 29, with 4 of these being road rides. Some of the locales whose rides have seen the most revisions include Annadel, Skeggs, Fort Ord, Wilder Ranch, and, of course, Sawpit Trail at Demo Forest.

I actually don't feel good about having to revise the ratings of the rides on the site. The bigger part of the usefulness of such ratings comes from their consistency arising from the fact they are based on the same person's assessment. Now that I've revised some, this consistency at least across time has been broken, though it might be argued that their consistency in reflecting something closer to the correct difficulty of the ride may arguably have been enhanced. On the other hand, if the comparability of those ratings had suffered due to changes in my own skill level over the years, perhaps there wasn't that much consistency to be lost in the first place, and the hope is that this revision will help more than it would hurt. In the end, though, it's worth remembering that there's no way to truly guarantee the objective consistency of these numbers and that they should be taken as nothing more than rough guidelines intended to convey only a general idea of a ride's difficulty.

It had literally been years since the last time I rode at Henry Coe. My resolve to limit my rides there to the driest part of the year in order to eliminate any exposure to ticks has been reducing my window of opportunity. Nevertheless, I not only got a chance to ride there recently, but I even managed to convince a riding buddy to join me.

That new Coe ride has now made it to the website as a new entry. In all honesty, given the popularity of this ride route among bikers who use Coe, this ride probably should have been the first Henry Coe ride listed on this site. Well, better late than never! The ride is now here and it should count as one of the better options listed on the site for experienced riders.

I joined the Appetite Seminar ride for the first time yesterday. It was very fortunate that the weather was simply perfect, because I shot a few photos of the ride to post on the site. These are now linked from the Pine Mountain Loop ride description. They're nothing too special and mainly consist of the sights of the trails already pictured on the Pine Mountain Loop photos with many more riders present. Still, they could satisfy the curiosity of those who are interested in seeing what they could expect on the ride.

I also took this opportunity to add a few more sentences about the Appetite Seminar to the ride description of Pine Mountain Loop.

Here's the first new ride addition to the "Out of Area" section of the website since the introduction of that section about a week ago. I don't think there's much doubt that Flume Trail is the most popular mountain biking trail in the Lake Tahoe area. Its dramatic setting along a steep (occasionally treacherously steep) hillside high above the lake shore, the resulting panoramic views, and the fact that the trail itself is quite tame and manageable even for beginner riders must be among the main factors contributing to this popularity. This particular route is a shuttle ride that adds to Flume Trail a long stretch along Tahoe Rim Trail that should be of much more biking interest to more experienced riders who appreciate technical trails, ending up as a route option that holds a good combination of riding interest and scenic interest.

For the longest time, I had been convinced that a road ride that traverses the few (but long) paved roads in the very scenic coastal lands of the Point Reyes National Seashore would be a real treat. When a hot Saturday during a heat wave that our area experienced in early September coincided for me with free time and the lack of any trail ride plan, I used the opportunity to finally try it myself and find out. My choice of an extra hot day for the ride was to be fairly certain that the area would be clear from fog and also because I know of few other places that are certain to be comfortably cool on such a hot day.

The ride didn't disappoint. There were few people around, traffic ranged between light and moderate (despite the ideal weather), and the scenery of Point Reyes is arguably unique across all of the Bay Area. While this ride was done on a day free of fog and clouds, if you happen to be fortunate enough to catch the area with less atmospheric haze than I have, the views from some spots along the route can be way more phenomenal than the images you'll find in the photo set for this ride. Moreover, as long as you have the time and stamina for it, there is a lot more mileage of the same kind that can be done at Point Reyes than just the route of this particular ride. This one is easily a keeper.

This is quite a short notice, but this Saturday, September 14th, there will be a benefit ride to support a badly injured fellow mountain biker, Jerry Javier, and to contribute toward his health expenses. As far as I understand, Jerry is suffering from a serious brain injury and paralysis. You can refer to this thread on MTBR to read a little about how this has unfolded.

To my knowledge, there is no online resource to which I can link showing the details of Saturday's benefit ride, but here is the information available to me:

• The ride is at Lake Chabot
• Meeting time is 7:30 AM. Wheels will be turning at 8:00 AM.
• On the ride day, donations will only be accepted in the form of cash.
• Participants are also welcome to bring biking equipment to donate, which will be sold to add to the fund
• There will be a potluck lunch after the ride
• The meeting spot is described as the "park police station", which I understand should be at or around this spot. I'm told that there will be some balloons to mark the spot. If you have difficulty finding it, head toward that part of the park looking for the balloons and a crowd of riders.

Given the popularity of Old La Honda Road with the local road cyclists, it was a weakness of this site that the only ride representing that road ride option here was actually a ride that included a substantial trail segment (and, therefore, could not be done on a road bike). For that reason, I feel that this new ride will be a much more sensible option for road riders who might come to this website looking for a ride suggestion involving this road. This is a pure road loop that follows a route that I would qualify as the shortest practical paved loop including Old La Honda that is both safe and fun. I've found that the ride provides a climb that is a good workout without being an over-the-top challenge, a fairly long and fun descent, and does not require a large chunk of my day in exchange for these.

Another one of the beginners' favorites on the site gets a much needed update this time. Judging by the traffic statistics of the website, the Angel Island ride might even be among the top 10 most popular rides on this site. I've, therefore, been acutely aware of the slimness of the site's content for this ride lately. This past weekend, I've used the excuse of my failure to put together a more substantial ride with my riding buddies and the incentive of staying away from the high temperatures in the forecast to repeat this ride and fix this deficiency of the website.

The ride has now received the full photo set treatment. The stats and ratings are slightly tweaked as well. And I've greatly expanded the description text. Hopefully, this doesn't simply make it more wordy but also adds plenty of useful information and details.

It has come to my attention that there's an upcoming charity fundraiser by the Marin Horse Council that benefits a Marin equestrian who was badly injured in an incident involving two mountain bikers and is now in financial dire straits as a consequence of that. This is going to be a dinner with live music in Novato on Saturday, July 27th. Further details and ticket information can be found on their online flyer. Equestrians and mountain bikers are not always the most harmoniously coexisting trail user groups, especially in Marin. While this may therefore come across as an odd concept, if any of you would be interested in doing the unexpected and helping change a few hearts and minds, attending this event to support this rider might be a meaningful way of trying that.

Here is an update that was long overdue. For well over a year, I've been meaning to repeat this ride in order to reflect the changes arising from the complete rebuilding of the portion of Dias Ridge Trail that starts descending toward Muir Beach. What I didn't know was that those changes were only a beginning. When I had last been on Dias Ridge in 2009, that portion was under construction. I didn't see until repeating the ride this year that all the rest of Dias Ridge trail has also been completely rebuilt, re-routed, and now has less elevation change. The even better news is that this rebuilding has changed the entire trail to the typical "multi-use path" standard of local parks, which is what ages into singletrack when given enough time. In fact, long stretches of the trail already are the width of honest-to-goodness singletrack right now.

It doesn't end there either. The majority of Middle Gulch Trail was also groomed into a four-foot-wide multi-use path since my last time here (possibly the reason for the closure in 2012?) and even a large part of the initial climb up Miwok Trail has been considerably tidied up and one hairpin turn was partially re-routed. So, the ride not only gets a full photo set now that reflects all of these updates, but the GPS data, ride type breakdown, and even the ratings have been updated to reflect these changes. I've also expanded the description substantially. It's my hope that these will make it that much more likely for viewers of the site to take notice of this ride, because it's such a great one.

The new ride I'm adding this time is from one of the mountain biking hot spots of the East Bay: Mount Diablo. There are only a handful of bike-legal singletrack trails on and around Mount Diablo, so, ever since I saw this ride route as a featured route suggestion on one of the BikeMapDude maps threading together three of these trails on a ride of reasonable length, it had been on my to-do list. The inclusion of this much singletrack in an area that is not known for the availability of a lot of bike-legal singletrack makes this ride worth highlighting, in my opinion.

Having done the ride, I can't claim that it can become one of my favorites. There are too many steep climbs, and a couple of outrageously steep climbs. The excellent scenery does make up for it up to a point, but whether the few miles of singletrack makes the rest of the ride worthwhile may have to be a personal call in the end. Meanwhile, the extreme steepness of a couple of the trails may hold a novelty value of its own, as I explain in the ride description.

There are only a few days left before the raffle drawing, but if you'd be interested in contributing to the realization of an excellent new trail at Demo Forest while at the same time having a shot at winning a wicked mountain bike in a drawing, here's your chance. Click on the heading of this entry for the details and purchase tickets for a raffle whose proceeds will go toward building a brand new, four-mile, flow trail at Demo. Tell your friends!

Here's another new casual ride for the website. The trail from which the ride gets its name is itself nothing extra special. However, it does connect on one end to the very popular Shoreline Park, which overflows with local residents on nice weekends. That makes this ride not only an option for a fun side activity for a picnic day at Shoreline, but also potentially a cool way of getting to that picnic for many. In addition, due to connecting to a pretty extensive network of flat trails that extend along the marshy bay shore, the ride could become worthwhile as a moderate workout option even for those riders whose interests are more serious than those of your average casual biker.

This new ride is a casual one. I feel that this is a ride category that has been under-represented on this website so far. The reason is not hard to guess: Rides such as this are not too attractive to the typical mountain (or road) biker. However, this is not the first casual ride represented on this site and won't be the last one. For the sake of completeness as well as for making the site more useful to a wider range of viewers, I will be adding several more such casual rides in the upcoming weeks and months. After all, plenty of casual bikers do go on to become avid road and mountain bikers eventually and I'll be happy if I can think that I've helped a few more people along that path.

As for this specific ride, there isn't that much to be said; and what I could say, I have already said in the description. Basically, this is a very popular and well used trail, and it's a good option to get some fresh air and a modest amount of exercise in a pretty and relaxing setting while (almost) not having to deal with motor-vehicle traffic at all.

Last weekend, I didn't have the opportunity to do a major trail ride, but I did get a chance to slip in a quickie. I figured I might as well do a ride that would also help the content of the website, and this short Marin Headlands ride presented itself as an ideal candidate for this. This ride had not received my full-blown photo set treatment yet, despite being one of the earliest rides listed on this site. I'm glad that this is now fixed. The ride now has a fresh and extensive photo set and I've also fleshed out the descriptive text some more. I'm also glad that I was once again reminded of how nice and relaxing this ride can be on a day with great weather, despite being "just a short fire-road loop".

I'm pretty psyched about a new piece of information I've added to each ride on the website today: Every ride now has a "bar graph" showing the relative amount of each trail type on that ride: singletrack, fire road, paved trail, and road. The reason I'm psyched is that this has been sorely lacking on this website even more than the sorting feature I added to the listing pages a few months ago. The lack of a sorting feature used to mean you have to spend more time eyeballing the list than you should, but the lack of any clear indication of ride type meant that you may have to read much of the descriptive text for each ride in order to obtain that information and sometimes not find it even then.

I feel (and hope) that this new feature will also improve the usefulness of the website for a wider spectrum of users, since it should now be easier for singletrack addicts to seek out the rides that provide the most of it, for road riders to quickly tell apart rides relevant to them from all the trail rides, and riders on townies to look for paved trails on which to do casual rides, etc. As I expect the types of rides I represent here to keep getting more diversified as we go forward, I think that this is important.

It's my "road ride season". This is the part of the year when I try to stay away from trails whenever the weekend is preceded by a significant amount of rain, in order to minimize trail damage. Consequently, this is the part of the year when I'm forced to divert more of my attention to road routes. A few weeks ago, I did another road ride that generated some new content for the website. It was a repetition of one of the earliest road rides represented here: the Fairfax to Mount Tam Loop.

I've taken a full set of photos on this ride which are now linked to the description page of the ride. The water level of Alpine Lake was quite low this time, meaning the scenery there was not at its best. But, the visibility on the coast was excellent, affording a clear view all the way to the Farallon Islands and beyond.

The original stats for this route were coming from a ride I had done on a mountain bike. I did the ride on a road bike this time and changed the duration figure to reflect my time for the ride on the road bike. I think this should make the stats more relevant to road bikers, whom I assume to be the main target audience for this ride option.

This time I have a news entry that's not directly about this website itself: California Department of Parks and Recreation is accepting public comments for a brief period as part of the "change-in-use evaluation process" for their trails. What this means is that, if you're a mountain biker who is worried about trail access for bikes, this is one of your best chances for being heard. At the moment, only a handful of state parks around the Bay Area allow bikes on singletrack trails. To give you an idea, here are some major state parks in our vicinity where bikes are not allowed on any trails other than fire roads:

• Mount Tamalpais
• Big Basin Redwoods
• Portola Redwoods
• Butano
• Castle Rock
• Henry Cowell Redwoods

This is despite the fact that a number of other state parks do allow bikes access to a substantial amount of singletrack, such as Henry Coe, Annadel, and Wilder Ranch. These successful examples are clear signs that there's little reason not to allow bikes on more trails in the remaining parks as well. So, the time is right to get our message across. Please help yourself and your fellow mountain bikers by submitting a comment to the parks department, asking for access to bikes on more state park trails, including singletracks. You'll find the link for submissions (as well as some other introductory information) on this MTBR forum thread. In addition, for the those of us who are lazy, there is also sample message text there that you can simply copy and paste, if you prefer. You have a few days to do this, but it appears that the deadline is December 4th. So, if you intend to write, don't procrastinate.

Spread the word!

Wilder Ranch has (relatively) recently seen a major trail re-routing: A section on the western half of Engelsmans Loop just before meeting Wild Boar Trail has been turned into a (much longer) singletrack, and the older fire-road routing of this segment has been abandoned. When I rode this welcome new singletrack segment early this summer, I was already fairly late in trying it out. Still, it took me this many more months to get around to reflecting the change on this website. But, it's now finally in.

The updated version of this Wilder Ranch ride route also includes an additional sub-loop along part of Baldwin Loop and excludes Cowboy Loop that used to be included on this ride. While neither of these two sub-loops are not-to-be-missed, given the choice, the Baldwin Loop is an easy pick for me out of the two. It involves no ridiculously steep stretches, it's not partially covered in potholes like Cowboy Loop was when I rode it, and it's accompanied by wider views for longer periods. Still, I've kept the version of this ride with Cowboy Loop available on the site as an alternate route, so that riders interested in that additional option can have access to its GPS track as well as its photos.

This is a ride that I feel great about adding to the site. Mount Diablo is not exactly one of the destinations that readily spring to mind when one is thinking of a place to go riding on some sweet singletrack. However, this ride provides just that. When done as an out-and-back route as in this case, 7 miles of this 12-mile ride is on singletrack. And we're not talking about a "singletrack with an asterisk" either (like a newly built wide singletrack "but it should age into a fun one", or a fire road that's narrowed by erosion or encroaching vegetation into a "singletrack on a shelf"—at least, not completely). This is pretty seriously good, narrow singletrack. Highly recommended.

As I explain in the ride description, I haven't actually done this ride as the out-and-back version shown on the site. But, I didn't want to waste time by waiting for my next opportunity to do the ride the way it should be done before being able to post it here, and instead did something I've never done to this extent and manually edited the GPS track that was up to the end of the Oyster Point Trail portion of my ride, and pasted it back onto itself as the return portion to make it into an out-and-back ride track. Since this website is meant to be a reference source and not an achievement list to give me bragging rights, I think accuracy trumps authenticity.

This new ride comes from what I would consider to be one of the relatively overlooked corners of the Bay Area when it comes to mountain biking. Similar to its close neighbor, Big Basin State Park, biking in Butano State Park is allowed only on fire roads, and there aren't too many of them. This means that there's only one ride's worth of bike-legal trails in this park. Thankfully, though, those trails do make a reasonable loop. This loop is not exactly a ride that I'd add to my "monthly rotation", but the ride did exceed my expectations and no one in our ride group regretted doing it. It's not because the trails on the ride present the juiciest technical biking challenges, but more because there are so many peripheral factors that make the ride a pleasant experience (such as the seemingly virgin nature, the breezy climb to the top, the storybook creek bed at the heart of the park, and even a small dose of adrenaline along some parts of the descent).